Hi I'm Philip Newey, author and editor. Here are some thoughts, ideas and other nonsense. I may, at times, express some views that offend some readers. I make no apologies for that. Read on at your own risk. Be sure to also visit my writer's page: http://philipnewey.com. I also run a manuscript services business called All-read-E: http://philipnewey.com/All-read-E.htm

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

The more editing I do,
the more I realise how we, the writers, are not very creative when it comes to
developing bad habits. I most assuredly include myself in this. My novel Maybe they’ll remember me has just been
re-edited in preparation for publication by Satalyte
Publishing. As I went through the suggested
changes I constantly slapped myself for having written what I had written. Of
course, I originally completed the novel three years ago, and I think I have learned
a little since then.

He turned

‘He turned...’; ‘she
turned...’ Sometimes I feel for the characters in a novel. They must become
very giddy with all this turning. Usually it’s something like this: ‘He turned
and looked at her and said...’ I covered ‘looked at’ in the earlier post. To
‘look’ we now add ‘turn’. What immediately comes to my mind are those dramatic
moments, just prior to a scene change in a soap opera. Two characters have been
engaged in a tense exchange. One leaves the room, but just before they make it
through the doorway, they turn, look at their enemy and deliver their final
cutting remark.

As with all these
words and phrases, it might on occasions be necessary to draw attention to a
character’s turning motion. Usually it isn’t.

It seemed

‘It seemed to her (me)
as though...’ This arises from excessive timidity. As human beings we are right
to be cautious about guessing what someone else is thinking and feeling. As
often as not we get it wrong. So our characters (who are generally human
beings) are similarly cautious. They can’t know
what the other person is thinking/feeling, so we are inclined to shroud this
with cautionary moderators: ‘It seemed...’, ‘He thought that...’ As a reader I
become very annoyed at this. I understand that what I am being told, whether it
is a third or first person narrative, is what the character thinks, or is what
seems, to them, to be the case.

As I was speaking, Fred seemed to become
angrier and angrier.

As I was speaking, Fred became angrier and
angrier.

Neither
is a literary gem, but I know which I prefer. Be more bold, assertive and
godlike in your narration.

She started

Unless she didn’t
finish, and this is somehow important, don’t clutter the page with this or
similar expressions. ‘She began to feel frightened.’ Really? If I say to you ‘She
felt frightened’, I think we can safely assume that at some point this feeling
actually arose. ‘He began to pack his suitcases.’ Unless Fred is going to burst
into the room and stop him, unless he is going to pause and gaze dreamily out
of the window for a while, all we need to know is, ‘He packed his suitcases.’

Most of the time, when
writers use this expression, all they mean
is ‘He packed his suitcases.’ He began
to pack them, he continued for some time
to pack them, and, finally, he finished
packing them.

This (like the other
words and phrases I have mentioned) are pointless fillers that add nothing to
the narrative.

That

I can’t finish this
blog without mentioning ‘that’. By deleting unnecessary instances of this
little word from a manuscript I can sometimes reduce the word length by several
hundred. ‘He said that he was going to the shops.’ No, ‘He said he was going to
the shops.’

So (I start to say as I turn to look at you) it seems to me that there are many ways in which we can make our writing more
crisp and concise.